Former Cardinal QB finding his niche

Since graduating Lamar University last May with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, Doug Prewitt is beginning to hit his stride by combining his love of sports with business acumen.

After graduating Monsignor Kelly Catholic High School in 2009, Prewitt enrolled at Lamar University to study marketing. That fall, the Cardinals returned to the gridiron to play their first home football game in more than two decades. Like thousands of LU football fans, Prewitt caught Cardinal fever.

His passion drove him further than body paint, tailgating and season tickets – when the opportunity came, he joined the team as a walk-on. Prewitt played quarterback for the Cardinals for two seasons. He appeared in 14 games, finishing his career with 87 completions for 947 yards and five touchdown passes. In his senior year, he worked for offensive coordinator Larry Kueck. It was during this time that he decided to pursue a career in the business of sports.

“My Kelly High School education prepared me for college and from that I was able to take full advantage of my education experience at Lamar,” Prewitt said. “The professors I had at Lamar, especially in the business college, prepared me for real life situations. They always found a way to relate the classroom lessons to an actual life experience.”

On a trip to California, he visited the University of San Francisco with a friend and “kind of fell in love with the Bay Area.” He soon decided to apply to USF’s master’s program in sport management because it had a decidedly business focus with emphasis on sport marketing, finance, budgeting, accounting and sport law.

When he learned he was accepted into the program, “I packed my bags and I moved there,” Prewitt said. “I kind of just dove into it and tried to make as many contacts as I could.”

He volunteered over the summer at a University of California, Berkeley football camp helping with its administration. “It was a good experience,” Prewitt said. “I made a lot of contacts and then, from there, I did a two-month research project for the San Francisco 49ers analyzing the read option looking for ways to stop it on defense and excel at it on offense.”

This fall, he began his classes at USF with “probably one of the best classes I’ve ever taken,” Prewitt said. It was also intensive. “We wrote six papers over a week, one five-page paper and five one-page papers. We would have a week to knock them out. It was intensive. The professor graded tough. He wanted us to really dive into our personal experiences to explain what we were connecting with in the books we were reading.”

In addition to his academic work, Prewitt is serving as a marketing intern in the football division of the San Francisco office of Octagon, a global sports, entertainment, lifestyle management and talent representation agency. There, Prewitt assists with research on contracts and endorsement deals, and “I also dip a little into public relations if the assistant in the office needs any help.”

The more he gets his feet wet, the more certain he is of his desire to make a career in sport marketing, particularly endorsement deals for athletes, activation, and sponsorships with events. “I think I have found my niche,” Prewitt said.